The Human Condition is a Japanese epic film trilogy made between 1959 and 1961. The trilogy follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, as he tries to survive in the fascist and oppressive world of WWII-era Japan. No Greater Love (1959) opens with Kaji marrying his sweetheart Michiko despite his misgivings about the future.

Masaki Kobayashi's mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of
Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour
The Human Condition (Ningen no joken), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa's six-volume novel,
tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar
Tatsuya Nakadai) from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW.
Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals
an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of its nation's wartime
mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi's riveting, gorgeously
filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.